I have given up using ChatGPT to write my blogs, so this one will take longer but be far better. ChatGPT reminds me of a few of my past bosses, who wouldn’t know a good idea if it came up to them with a huge Good Idea tattoo all over its forehead. One of the best things about ‘retirement’ is not being constrained by other people’s lack of imagination and having them throw the best ideas in your deliverable in the bin.
I will shortly be writing another book and these idea will hopefully be part of it, but I don’t want to give the whole idea away yet so let’s just call it the future of robots and skip the context for now.
The new idea incorporates and updates several inventions I have made, some of which are feasible engineering solutions to sci-fi ideas in films and games, mostly superior to the ones suggested in the game wikis. But it also goes far beyond them.
A decade ago I wrote up a technique to make free-floating combat drones, spherical ethereal, semi-transparent things that just float, and could be useful lab assistants like Glyph, or full function battle drones, that would be extremely difficult to defeat.
3 years later in 2016, I also wrote up a hypothetical new material I called Carbethium, that you could use to make the light shields and bridges on Halo (and Half Life 2). https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/carbethium-a-better-than-scifi-material/
A year later still in 2017 I invented folded carbon, https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2017/11/28/artificial-muscles-using-folded-graphene/, which would allow you to make electric muscles that could extend from centimetres to kilometres at high speed, useful for a wide range of things.
This year, I had arguably my best carbon invention, the inverse capacitor, that could hold 50kWh per kg, or act as an explosive or a rocket propellant. I think it would work, but the jury is still out on that one. https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2023/05/05/the-inverse-capacitor-a-novel-energy-storage-system-with-potential-applications-in-rocket-propulsion/
I have also variously described how to make Star Wars light sabres and Landspeeders, Spiderman Suits and web-throwers and assorted space techs.
Although floating combat drones and light bridges appear in the far future in sci-fi, they and all of the ideas I will describe in this blog could be done in the next few decades, say 2050. The Star Wars ideas were of course invented millions of years ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away.
To the point:
I recently watched Blade Runner 2049 and there were holographic-style androids in it, that changed their appearance, yawn. Real holograms are tied to a display, and some other 3D projection systems using mist screens or laser interference, but in some sci-fi, the display device is carried around somehow by the holographic robot. The viewer isn’t meant to worry too much about how, but I am an engineer and I do. I couldn’t watch the fights in Star Wars in space with winged fighter making sharp turns, in a vacuum without worrying either, and that eventually made me invent the Space Anchor.
So, how to make a see-through, image-changing android that can follow you around anywhere? Easy-peasy. Using my Glyph techniques, you can make a free-floating drone that isn’t spherical, but is humanoid shaped. With some surface detailing displays, you can make it have any appearance you like. It would float around, and via network links, you could happily talk to it and it could do useful AI stuff for you, but its combat capability would mostly be limited to laser beams or electric shocks.
The good bit is that since the whole thing only needs graphene plates with inbuilt electron pipes for levitation, you could make one in a 500ml tin easily, and when you open the tin, like a Jack-in-the-box, it would pop out, expand and be a full life-sized android, as bland or as sexy as you want.
But who wants an android that can only fire lasers and chat? I want one that can do androidy stuff like the housework, or be a soldier, or a lover, or a construction worker, or whatever. And you can.
All you need is to add some folded carbon into the mix, maybe some carbethium too, and some inverse capacitor graphite as the power supply (and a very lethal kinetic weapon or a phaser (I just noticed I forgot to write that one up since I can’t find a reference for it).
Folded carbon is just layers of graphene that are hinged at the edges, with electromagnet circuits on each face, so they repel or attract, so can act as powerful muscles that can compress down to extremely small sizes 0.35nm per layer, so if the layers are 1cm wide, then the full length can easily be 1,000,000 times longer than the folded length, even while keeping the angles between the plates small enough not to compromise the magnetic effects. So a 1 litre tin of the stuff could make an android that is still ethereal, but now doesn’t have to float, but can stand on its own and manage to carry high loads, say 100kg, with ease. Some of the tin would be carbon used for the inverse capacitor, so your android could fit in the tin and have whatever appearance and AI you want, and enough power to last all day.
Not finished yet.
This robot would be fully shape changing, so could do pretty much anything you see in Terminator 2 with its crappy old-fashioned liquid metal material. Folded carbon could make the sharp knife arms it uses or the spikes, or the probes and tools to interface to machines. And it could take on any appearance at all. Yet if you used it on Westworld, you could shoot it, and once your back is turned, it could get back up again perfectly fine, perhaps as a different character. The Westworld series androids that have skeletons with electro-active muscle fibres 3D printed onto them and take a whole team to repair them are quaint old-fashioned ways of doing it, even though they are meant to be futuristic.
So my androids would be far superior to the Terminator robots or the Westworld or the Blade Runner Nexus 8 androids. They would be stronger, faster, far cheaper, pretty much impossible to kill or damage, could work all day on a charge, and when you want to store them, they could fit in a 1 litre box, with total weight of around 1kg.
Not finished yet.
The robot can take any shape. Your shape. You could wear the 1kg of armour, with all the stuff in it you need to make a full suit of body shield. Now we’re talking the personal body shields you see in Dune Films (or indeed the book). So it could completely surround you as a close-fitting suit of armour that wouldn’t impede your movement at all, give you perfect camouflage and weigh less than your normal fatigues. The folded carbon can have a great deal of omnidirectional sensing built in. If it sees a projectile coming, or a laser beam, it can rearrange itself in microseconds to put more graphene based armour in exactly the place it needs to be to stop or deflect or indeed reflect it right back wear it came from. It can also fabricate a spike or knife anywhere on it to attack the attacker, and thanks to the properties of the inverse capacitor, it could also fire miniature hypersonic missiles at them. (So it improves greatly on the Omniblade/Omnitools from Mass Effect too and could also implement quite a few of the biotic abilities so even doubles as a good biotic amp).
Dune is set after 10,000AD but you could build my version in 2050 and it wouldn’t let the slow blade pass through like the Dune Holtzmann Effect shields, but rather cut the blade into small pieces, electrocute the assailant or cut them into small pieces too, or blast them into oblivion.
In between times, it can just spawn a companion battle android that is a super-intelligent super-soldier, or your best ever lover, or your domestic cleaner, whichever you need, and when it’s no longer needed, it’ll just go back in its 1 litre jack-in-a box or into your uniform belt.
Finished, for now anyway.
Just for the record, ChatGPT isn’t impressed. “…much of it currently resides more in the domain of science fiction than imminent technological reality …. the practical realization of these ideas is still far off.” Sounds just like my old bosses. I still maintain it’s all feasible in 2050. Not that far off!
Timeguide - The future before it comes over the horizon 